Inmate Fled After Being Uncuffed by Guard

In Letter to Former Girlfriend, Man With History of Violent Crime Vowed Not to Die Behind Bars

The Maryland inmate who escaped from a Laurel hospital this week had been released from his handcuffs and was guarded by only one correctional officer, law enforcement sources said yesterday.

Kelvin D. Poke, who carjacked two vehicles Wednesday before being fatally shot by police, was left alone with one guard at Laurel Regional Hospital after the guard's partner took a break, said Greg Shipley, a Maryland State Police spokesman.

Poke, 45, was wearing leg irons, and his hands were cuffed behind his back. He broke free when the remaining guard attempted to move the handcuffs from behind his back to in front of him so he could use the restroom, according to a law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity because of an ongoing inquiry into the incident.

Poke, who had a history of violent crime and incarceration dating to the early 1980s, was serving a life sentence.

He snatched the guard's .38-caliber gun and fled, shooting a man outside the hospital and stealing his car. That man remained hospitalized in good condition yesterday.

Yesterday, new details emerged about Poke and his seven hours on the lam, including a Dec. 19 letter in which he told a former girlfriend in Northeast Washington, "My life is done."

The woman, Rhonda Jackson, the mother of Poke's 22-year-old daughter, said she and Poke lived together for about a year in the mid-1980s. She said Poke often beat her, until she finally left him when she learned she was pregnant. She said she kept in touch with Poke and occasionally visited him in prison.

In the letter, provided by Jackson, Poke said he wished his life had "turned out differently," and he vowed not to die behind bars. As for his most recent case -- the 2005 carjacking and abduction of a Hyattsville women, for which he received the life sentence -- he said he had been "railroaded."

He told Jackson: "I gave a dude some drugs to rent the car he was driving. He didn't tell me the car had been carjacked and a person robbed and kidnapped. I got pulled over and arrested 24 hours later after the incident had occurred."

He added, "I was not born in anybodie's prison therefore I refuse to grow old and die here."

About 8 a.m. Wednesday, Poke, who was at the hospital after complaining of chest pains, managed to break loose after one of two officers assigned to guard him left Poke's "immediate vicinity on a break," Shipley said. He said he could not confirm that the incident took place in a restroom or say why Poke was not in handcuffs at the time.

Rick Binetti, a state corrections spokesman, said that a review is underway and that the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services will take disciplinary action against the correctional officers if warranted. He said department policy calls for inmates to be handcuffed at all times and guarded by two officers, one armed and one unarmed.